What Are You?

In a Nutshell Animations

So. Are you your body? And if so, how exactly does this work? Lets explore lots of confusing questions.

Transcript

00:00Are you your body?

00:02Well, kind of, right?

00:05But is there a line where this stops being true?

00:08How much of yourself can you remove before you stop being you?

00:13And does the question even make sense?

00:22Your physical existence is cells, trillions of them, at least ten times more than there

00:28are stars in the Milky Way.

00:30A cell is a living being, a machine made of up to 50,000 different proteins.

00:36It has no consciousness, no will, no purpose, it just is.

00:41But it is still an individual.

00:44Together, your cells form huge structures for jobs like preparing food, gathering resources,

00:50transporting stuff around, scanning the environment, and so on.

00:54If you extract cells from your body and put them in the right environment, they will continue

00:59to stay alive for a while.

01:01So your cells can exist without you, but you can't exist without them.

01:07If we take all the cells away, there is no you anymore.

01:12Is there a line where a pile of your cells stops being you?

01:16For example, if you donate an organ, billions of your cells will continue to live on inside

01:21someone else.

01:23Does this mean that a part of you became a part of another person?

01:26Or is this other body keeping a part of you alive?

01:31Or let us imagine an experiment.

01:33You and a random person from the street exchange cells.

01:37One at a time, your body gets one of their cells, their body gets one of your cells.

01:42At which point would they become you?

01:45Would they ever, or is this just a very slow and gross way to teleport you?

01:51Let's make this more complicated.

01:53The image of ourselves as a static thing is untenable.

01:56Almost all of your cells have to die during your lifetime.

02:00250 million have died since the beginning of this video alone.

02:05Between 1 and 3 million per second.

02:09In a 7-year period, most of your cells are replaced at least once.

02:15Every time your cell setup changes, you are slightly different than before.

02:19So a part of you is dying constantly.

02:22If you are lucky enough to become old, you would have cycled through roughly a million

02:26billion cells.

02:29So what you consider yourself is really just a snapshot.

02:33But sometimes cells are broken and don't want to die, questioning the very nature of

02:38the unity of our bodies.

02:40We call them cancer.

02:42They cancel the biological social contract and become basically immortal.

02:48Cancer is not an outside invader.

02:50It's a part of you that puts its own survival over yours.

02:53But you could also argue that a cancer cell becomes another entity inside us, another

02:57being that just wants to thrive and survive.

03:01Can we blame it for that?

03:02A chilling cell story is that of Henrietta Lacks, a young cancer patient who died in

03:071951.

03:09Usually, cells only survived for a few days in the lab, making research very hard.

03:15Henrietta's cancer cells were immortal.

03:17Over the decades, they were multiplied over and over again and used for countless research

03:21projects, saving countless lives.

03:24Henrietta's cells are still alive and overall have been grown to at least 20 tons of biomass.

03:30So there are living parts around the world from someone who has been considered dead

03:34for decades.

03:36How much of Henrietta is in these cells?

03:40What makes one of your cells you anyway?

03:43Maybe the information contained in it, your DNA.

03:47Until recently, it was believed that all the cells in your body had basically the same

03:51genetic code.

03:53But it turns out this is wrong.

03:56Your genome is mobile, changing over time through mutations and environmental influences.

04:01This is especially the case in your brain.

04:04According to recent discoveries, a single neuron in an adult brain has more than 1,000

04:09neurons in its genetic code that are not present in the cells surrounding it.

04:13But how much, you, is your DNA really?

04:17About 8% of the human genome is made up of viruses that once infected our ancestors and

04:22merged with us.

04:23Mitochondria, power plants of the cell, once were bacteria that merged with the ancestors

04:29of your cells.

04:30They still have their own DNA.

04:33An average cell has hundreds of them, hundreds of little things that are not really human,

04:38but they still kind of are.

04:40It is confusing.

04:43Let's backtrack a bit.

04:44We know that you're made up of trillions of little things, made from more little things

04:49that are constantly changing.

04:51Together, all those little things are not static, but dynamic.

04:55Their composition and condition is changing constantly.

04:58So we might just be a self-sustaining pattern without clear borders that gained self-awareness

05:04at some point and now has the ability to think about itself through time and space,

05:09but really only exists in this exact very moment.

05:14Where did this pattern start?

05:16With your conception?

05:17When the first human arose?

05:19When life first began conquering our small planet?

05:22Or when the elements that make up your body were forged in a star?

05:26Our human brains evolved to deal with absolutes.

05:30The fuzzy borders that make up reality are hard to grasp.

05:35Maybe ideas like beginning and end, life and death, you and me, are really not absolutes,

05:42but ideas belonging to a fluent pattern, a pattern that is lost in this strange and beautiful

05:48universe.

05:51The problem of who we are isn't just a question of our cells, but it's also a question of

05:56our minds.

05:58Just as our cells can be divided and separated from us, so can our very brains be divided

06:03and separated from us, while still in the skull.

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